Grooveshark, Pandora, and Spotify Plugins

Android 1.6+ required

Have you ever heard a song that you didn’t know but instantly fell in love with? You probably pulled out Shazam or SoundHound to find out more of the artist and then rushed to GrooveShark, Pandora, or Spotify to listen to more. Developer Alex Beggs has crafted an application that will handle the light lifting of that activity for you. With his GrooveIn, PandIn, and SpotIn plug-ins, Beggs makes it easier for users to go from an audio discovery app to an audio streaming app. In the case of Grooveshark and Spotify, it will instantly begin streaming music in those apps. Pandora will create a station for that artist. It works like this:

My Car Salon

Ever wanted to own a mechanic shop but didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars, time, or know-how to make it happen? Do it virtually with My Car Salon, a game focused on managing an auto shop. Players manage an auto shop with multiple stations and a stream of customers that require attending to. Take too long to quickly provide service and clientele will become impatient and leave. Players can purchase upgrades through money earned or use real-world cash for in-app payments. Hiring employees people and upgrading equipment will lead to a more efficient shop with better service and more money for you. I found the game to be incredibly simple and tedious, so this isn’t really something that I’d play for hours on end, but fans of management or processing will probably enjoy themselves.

iVona Text-to-Speech HQ

Android 1.6+ required
250 MB download required

There have been a lot of things written about text to speech synthesis in the wake of voice search and command apps covered in the past few weeks. The problem with most of these TTS apps is that the voice can sound robotic and choppy, which is a turn off for some people. Ivona TTS HQ doesn’t provide a wholly-human tone, but it is a more natural-sounding voice. Ivona delivers a better voice for several programs that use TTS, including Google Navigation, Handcent SMS, and SpeaktoIt Assistant. The app is free in beta, but only until November 15th, 2011. Afterwards, there will be feature limitations unless a user pays a yet-to-be-disclosed price. It is available in most languages.